Black Stars
by Tristan-the-Dreamer
Summary: Night can bring strange moods and thoughts. Post retirement.
1. Chapter 1

I had rarely been so homesick in my life; as I stirred uneasily in my bed, I felt as if I was a student all over, missing my family and feeling myself out of place. I felt it like an ache in my stomach, and the strangest thing was that I was home, was I not? I lay still, listening to the Sussex breeze whisper in the curtains. I had dropped the little habit of counting how many days I had been living with Holmes again now; the numbers became meaningless and blew away on the night air. He was teaching me all he knew about the surrounding land and wildlife, but of late I had lost a little interest...of late, I had been feeling strangely removed.

As I glanced out the window and thought sadly that I had seen far too many sunsets, I caught a new scent mingled in with the ocean breeze: cigarette smoke.

I pulled on my dressing gown and follow the scent to the sitting room. Holmes was stretched out on a couch.

"What's keeping you awake?"

He shrugged. "Yourself?"

"I don't know." I rested my hand on the back of an armchair. "I feel my time is over. I've nothing left to do. It's—a feeling of completeness."

"Hm." He watched the smoke spin and writhe, the spirit leaving the dying cigarette. "And what prompted this?"

I rested my forearms on the top of the chair. The red-orange flicker from his cigarette dimmed my thoughts. "I don't know. I simply feel that I am empty, Holmes. Not in a bad way, I don't feel angry. No, I'm very calm. But I do feel that I've done everything I was meant to do. I finished my list, I'm done. But what now, Holmes?"

Holmes was quiet a long time.

My legs were getting tired, so I sat down and watched the smoke write longitudinal secrets up to the ceiling. "I mean—some people seem to feel that life is a great process of building up—cresting like a wave, and then they do some great action, some feat, in their final years. They buy a business, they make a name for themselves, become a philanthropist. I just don't see it that way, I don't believe that's how it is.

I think every moment is the most important moment, because that's the time you have to act in, to help people. I gave to everyone I could, and I'm glad of that. I don't regret my choices and the paths I took. But I have run out, I'm empty, Holmes, and I have nothing left to give anyone."

"That does not necessarily mean your life must now come to a close."

"How's that, Holmes?" I stayed looking at the smoke; it seems too much effort to look at anything else; besides which, objects had seemed removed from my heart of late, by the width and opacity of a dragonfly wing. After a while, though, the silence brought me climbing down the smoke loops and I rested my sight on his face.

"Watson, I know your usefulness isn't over."

"How d'you mean?"

He ashed his cigarette. "I still need you."

"Do you really?"

He sat up stiffly and nodded at the space beside him; I came and sat.

"How could you need me, Holmes?" I protested, though a smile was beginning. "I've finished writing up your cases; you don't need anyone to help with cases now, you probably regret inviting me to move here."

"Don't be absurd."

"But how, Holmes, how can you need me?" I pressed him again, eager to hear the answer, in fact—desperate to hear the answer.

"Well—it's like flowers, Watson, or the colours. We wouldn't die without them, they feed us spiritually, not physically, but to wake up one day in a colourless world, naught but grey, with no flowers to perfume the air and refresh the mind…it would not be really living." He brought the cigarette to his lips mechanically, breathing smoke in a sigh. "Inner exhaustion is not an altogether unfamiliar sensation to me. Go back to sleep, Watson, and who knows but the morning will warm your spirits."

"Why _are_ you still awake, Holmes?"

"I was simply thinking."

"Gloomy thoughts?"

"Both gloomy and bright. My mind followed no particular thread of discourse. It is a little something I engage in now and then, mental stargazing; more so, I find, now that I have entered my later years."

"Holmes?"

"Mm-hm."

"I don't want to go back to sleep. Can I stargaze with you?"

"Certainly." The kindly look he gave me filled me with content.


	2. Chapter 2

The moon rose and the coals sank down to modest orange. Watson was still on the couch, though he'd left briefly, returning wrapped with a blanket, and when he resettled it was considerably closer to me. I promptly extinguished my cigarette. It was utterly unfair to subject the man to breathing smoke when he was getting no enjoyment from the cigarette himself.

"What are you thinking, Holmes?" He asked, leaning his head on the couch.

"I don't know. Perhaps the moon, perhaps the waves. Perhaps nothing."

He made a pensive sound, mixed with a yawn, and looked to me to see what would happen next. He looked so like a caterpillar at that moment, with the blanket round him; a bunchy and faded little fellow, only he wasn't, for he had already shed his cocoon and flown all over the world.

"Butterflies, Watson."

"Eh?"

"I'm thinking of butterflies."

"That's nice," he said dreamily, looking at nothing in particular.

"Are you tired? Perhaps you should get some sleep now."

"No! I'm happy right here. Do you want me to leave?"

"You know I don't."

"Well…" the look of irritation left, and he lapsed back into sleepy calm. "Fancy it will storm tomorrow?"

"It's certainly blowing hard tonight. Rather ominous."

"Oh, I don't know. I rather like it."

The fire was very low now, and I had turned down the lights earlier, so that the room was lit by the chalky blood of the moon spilling through the windows. I saw black spirits of rabbits crouching in the lawn, gnawing the grass. "Watson."

"Mmm?"

"Are you happy here?"

I kept my gaze to the window, watching the wild rabbits gnaw, and gnaw. The wind filled the silence.

"I'm not…happy, exactly—not all the time—but I'm the happiest I can be, Holmes. I'm just…feeling worn down and a little sad."

Butterflies die in the fall.

"I think it's just…some…passage? I don't know the word. I think it will end, soon enough. It's simply—Holmes, maybe you will know what I mean. I don't know, this has never happened to me before. I feel as if—not feel, even, it's a sensation always with me—"

"A sensation of what?"

"Nothing bad." A hint of a chuckle coloured the second word, and he lay his worn hand on the arm I had put round him protectively. "Holmes, it's just a feeling that everything I was meant to do, has been done. A belief that I have…spent myself, I have completed my destiny. Dear me, that sounds rather presumptuous!"

"Not at all, do continue, please."

"Well…um, you remember I said I think of myself as a wave? Always moving, that's me, through life—always trying to do something of use, not waiting. I want to do it, to do what I can, when I can."

"Yes."

"It…it feels to me that I've reached the end. That I'm _ready_ to lap on the shore, to be finished. How to explain? Nothing's unresolved, Holmes, there is nothing jarring, nothing more to solve, I feel…complete. Yes. Complete, that's the word. Have you ever felt like that, Holmes? Like everything's finished, and you're ready to leave?"

"Not quite like that. Watson are you ill?"

"No," he said, with affectionate exasperation. "Perhaps I shouldn't have said anything. I'm just an old man with foolish thoughts. It's not that I want to leave you, Holmes, you know that—don't you? You must know that. Holmes? Old fellow, have I hurt you? Oh…I'm sorry."

We sat close together for a long time.

"I don't know what is next in life," I said softly at last. "But I know this, Watson: we die when we are meant to die. As long as we're alive, there's a reason. And after all…I don't know…but, supposing we are two spent waves…at the end…isn't it true that the shallow water is most pleasant to be in?"

He fell asleep soon after, and I watched the fire fade to ash. But I woke first, in the morning, and so it was I saw the first rays of sun wreathe the world, and warm the butterflies, fanning their wings on the flowers just outside the window.

Even old butterflies can feel warmth.

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End file.
